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Wednesday, December 5, 2012

ANSWERING QUESTIONS NOBODY’S ASKING

This is just a friendly reminder that you don’t pay a dime for the dozen or so articles I post every month. In case you’re feeling guilty, this is your chance at absolution by sending cash, check or money order to

Iwas hoping that as I got older, I would find things less confusing. Instead, the mysteries of modern life seem to be multiplying like rabbits.

For instance, why do so many movie lines that don’t contain even a kernel of wit or wisdom seem to pass through society like a virus, leaving some of us with flu-like symptoms? Just a few of those that have enjoyed prolonged currency include: “Make my day” and “Do you feel lucky, punk?” Then there’s “Show me the money,” “Life is like a box of chocolates,” “Hasta la vista, baby,” “I’ll be back” and the omnipresent “You can’t handle the truth!”

At least in the old days, when we got “I’m shocked… shocked” from Casablanca, Nobody’s perfect” from Some Like it Hot and “Frankly, my dear, I don’t give a damn” from Gone With the Wind, the source material tended to be first-rate movies.

Speaking of movies, I recently tried sitting through the latest Batman, The Dark Knight Rises, but could barely make it to the halfway mark. It raises the question once again why anyone would want to shoot action sequences in the dark. They spend a hundred million dollars producing this tripe and then turn it into an over-long radio show.

Something else that I have never understood is why super heroes required secret identities. It always seemed like a lot of unnecessary trouble. Why did Batman have to use Bruce Wayne as a front? And even sillier was Superman insisting on hiding behind the nerdy façade of Clark Kent and having to change his clothes in a telephone booth. The dude could fly, bullets bounced off his chest and he had X-ray vision. What was he afraid of? Autograph hounds?

Why do Obama and the flakier environmentalists oppose oil derricks, but promote windmills? Oil is not only a far better and more reliable source of energy than wind, but they don’t massacre birds by the thousands. When there’s an occasional oil spill and it gets goo on seagulls, these people become as crazed as the loons at PETA; but when windmills mutilate even protected classes of birds, such as eagles, you don’t hear a peep out of them.

Many of us conservatives have sought an explanation as to why, even after four years of Obama’s destructive policies and his insistence on governing by presidential fiat, Mitt Romney received two million fewer votes than John McCain. Recently, a friend of mine, Dr. Harry Maller, reminded me that in 2008, 17% of voters said they would never cast a ballot for a Mormon. Assuming that a lot of those religious bigots are Republicans, and that it’s just possible that not all of the 15 million entitlement junkies Obama has added to the food stamp rolls are Democrats, the mystery might finally be solved.

Although liberals are loath to admit it, there are forms of bigotry that have nothing to do with race, nation of origin or sexual proclivities. I, personally, would prefer to believe that the two million Republicans who didn’t bother voting this time around were just too lazy, not that they were the sort of narrow-minded pinheads who put their religious intolerance ahead of what’s best for America.

Speaking of Obama, some two thousand years ago, Marcus Tullius Cicero wrote 76 words that might have been written yesterday: “Do not blame Caesar, blame the people of Rome who have so enthusiastically acclaimed and adored him and rejoiced in their loss of freedom and danced in his path and given him triumphal processions. Blame the people who hail him when he speaks in the Forum of the new wonderful good society which shall now be Rome’s, interpreted to mean more money, more ease, more security, and more living fatly at the expense of the industrious.”

For a long time, I was also puzzled by the fact that so many liberals sided with Muslims, treating them with the sort of respect generally reserved for such sacred cows as urban blacks, illegal aliens and the New York Times editorial board. After all, these are people whose religion promotes intolerance in the extreme. Free speech, women’s rights, gay rights, democracy, and even science and art, are all alien concepts everywhere in the Middle East except in Israel. In addition, these are the folks who have declared war on the West, and use any means available to terrorize those they regard as infidels, which not only includes all of us, but also their co-religionists if they happen to belong to a different sect.

Over the past three decades, except in a few isolated instances, every act of terrorism in the world can be traced to these barbarians. They fire thousands of rockets into Israel, hoping to kill civilians. They fly planes into our skyscrapers. What’s more, calling them cutthroats isn’t an insult, it’s a job description.

In spite of all that, there are millions of liberals who stand ready to defend them in a way they would never have defended Nazis. Or conservatives, for that matter.

I could be wrong, but I have concluded that the only explanation for this bizarre alliance is that they share a blind hatred of Christians and Jews, and subscribe to the notion that the enemy of my enemy is my friend.

I, on the other hand, believe that the friend of my enemy is my enemy. Which should explain why I never tire of ridiculing liberals.

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